Left Alone I've Lost My Mind
by Lunatic Silver
Summary: The other side is cold and lonely and cruel. So it isn't hard for Vicki to make the choice to switch places. Written for tvd hiatus. Rated for language.


**Disclaimer: **I do not own _The Vampire Diaries_ nor its characters. They belong to L.J. Smith, Kevin Williamson, Julie Plec, The CW Network, and whoever else.

**Note/Warning:** Written for **tvd_hiatus** at LiveJournal, for the prompt, "Vicki - it isn't fair.", and was beta'd by savage_lunacy. This was ridiculously fun to write - exploring Vicki's post-death POV was so different and so refreshing! Feedback is greatly appreciated!

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><p><strong>Left Alone I've Lost My Mind<strong>

The other side is cold and lonely.

Vicki imagines the first part, at least. She doesn't actually feel cold; she doesn't actually _feel_at all. But the absence of warmth makes her think of the cold (bitter winters from her childhood when she'd hug Mattie in his bed and try to keep them warm because Mom couldn't afford to turn the heat up too high). So she thinks of the other side as cold.

The lonely part, at least, is one hundred percent true. Doesn't matter that she's always around someone - Matt or Jeremy or Tyler or her mom off with some lousy dickwad that Kelly Donovan once thought herself better than before she got knocked up cause she was stupid in love - she's always lonely. She screams at the people she's near until she can't scream anymore because the lack of her body reacting to the lack of oxygen frightens her.

At first it was kind of cool. She'd scream and scream and scream - not so much for attention, but just to see how long she could.

The novelty wore off really fast. Especially when she started doing it more for attention that never came.

Vicki's tried touching, screaming, whispering, moving things, flailing her arms in front of people. She's tried closing her eyes and focusing everything she feels into some kind of energy. Generally she opens her eyes and realizes she's been doing that for anywhere between two and twelve hours, nothing has happened, and she has no idea where anyone is now. She gave that up after the time she did it for twelve hours at the Grill and had no idea where Mattie had gone off to (it'd taken her only a few minutes to focus on him and pop up beside him while he was kissing Caroline Forbes of all annoying people, but still).

The other side is cold and lonely. And it sucks.

Vicki is supposed to be getting wasted with friends (low-life losers) or pining over Tyler (stupid dick) or waiting tables (ungrateful pricks) or half-heartedly fending off Jeremy (lovesick puppy) or trying to help Mattie with homework (hopeless case). She's supposed to be alive, getting older, worrying more and more what's going to happen to her. She was supposed to live a long, lonely life where she breathed and fucked and got high and watched as everyone else moved on and had great lives.

Or even better - she's supposed to be alive only not, never aging or getting sick or worrying about what's going to happen to her. Running away with Jeremy and doing whatever they want, no consequences, no condescension, no obstacles.

Damn it, she's supposed to be on their side, where it's warm and people hear her when she screams.

But she's dead. She's on the other side, where everyone passes her by. It's her personal hell; nobody has to notice her anymore. Invisible and unseen, just like they'd always wanted her to be.

The other side is cold and lonely and cruel.

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><p>Vicki spends the first few weeks in constant mood swings. She feels like she's PMS'ing on overdrive. One minute she's okay; she's screaming and bouncing around everywhere she can think of. She goes to Tyler's and dances wildly around the Lockwood house and spies on the two snobs he calls parents while they bicker - both drunk - until it gets creepy (and she hightails it out of there before clothes start coming off).<p>

Then she finds Matt and Tyler at the Grill, hanging out and dicking around at the pool table like nothing's wrong (like she's not fucking dead and discarded like the trash she'd been called behind her back), and she breaks down. She sits on the pool table and ignores the balls not so much going through her but hitting her and then suddenly on her other side and cries.

Matt and Tyler don't hear her, of course, and that only makes her cry harder.

So she goes to Jeremy, only he doesn't remember that she's really gone (and she vaguely recalls the first night after she died, screaming and sobbing at Damon not to take her away from Jeremy).

That's when she gets mad. She tries everything; tries breaking things, smashing or kicking, but her fingers can't grab anything. Her feet hit a barrier and nothing happens. She screams and curses - she says horrible things about Jeremy and Elena and their dead parents and Elena's undead boytoys and Mattie and Tyler and Tyler's bitch of a mom and dick of a dad. Then she starts to cry again, because she starts talking about her mom, and about herself, and it hits her that even becoming a vampire couldn't keep her from fucking up and getting herself killed like she'd known so many people had been expecting.

Vicki leaves the Gilbert house and wonders if there's anyone else dead and lingering behind like her. She searches and searches for a while, because it takes her mind off all the anger and fear and loneliness and despair. But everywhere she thinks to go (which winds up being the entire town) nobody reacts and acknowledges her. No one ever hears her or sees her or feels her.

Nobody comes over and grabs her and tells her to shut up, it's pointless, hey, welcome to the other side.

Then she remembers she can get away with spying and eavesdropping and running around wherever she likes with no repercussions. So she runs around screaming obscenities in City Hall and at the police station and the high school, just because she can.

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><p>It always gets painful, though. Something always happens to remind her of how lonely she is, and how her absence makes no difference to all the people in her fucked up life.<p>

Mattie starts getting close to Caroline, because he's lonely and she's needy and vice versa. He doesn't care that Vicki is missing, just that she ditched him (and she screams over and over she didn't, she wouldn't - even though she was going to - but he never hears her).

Jeremy meets that Anna bitch. It hurts, watching him get closer to her and closer to her, but every so often he mentions Vicki's name, and she could cry because he remembers her (and she could hug him, except she can't). It hurts, watching him flirting and asking that Anna girl to turn him, but then she knows it's so he can be with her - and she could cry all over again, hug him all over again (and she hopes he does turn, because then he'll remember, and he won't be able to let go of her).

Then they find her. Caroline, actually, and Vicki is happy, ecstatic - because then Matt and her mom and Jeremy and everyone will know that Elena and her boytoys covered it up, hid her away, dumped her out there like she was _nothing_. Only they don't find that out because fucking 'Lezzie' Forbes covers it up, and Vicki screams for hours.

Until she sees her mother crying. And Mattie. And Jeremy and Tyler just sitting in her kitchen, and everyone's falling apart over her. It doesn't feel good like she'd thought. It hurts. It hurts worse than ever, because she's dead. She's dead, and on the other side, and they can't hear her or see her or feel her when she tries to hug them and talk to them and tell them it's okay. She's still here. She'll never leave them.

It doesn't even get much better when Anna flees Jeremy's house with a broken heart because all that time it'd been for Vicki.

The other side is cold and lonely. It's cruel, and it sucks.

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><p>It's months and months after she's dead when she sees Jeremy die for real. She's terrified and happy - because sometimes he sees her when he dies (and sometimes, more times, he sees Anna, even though Vicki never has). She hopes that maybe, just maybe, she can keep him now. Have someone with her. But he doesn't see her, and she feels Anna there, on the other side, and for a moment Vicki isn't alone while she's freaking out because she might have really lost Jeremy for good.<p>

And Bonnie - stupid Bonnie Bitchett who Vicki never gave two shits about but has learned to hate - is crying and sobbing like it's her own, personal loss, and Vicki wants to slap her. Least she's still alive, least she's seen and heard and felt. Least she'll move on, find someone else.

Vicki is all alone, and now the few, fleeting moments of contact with someone are lost to her forever - and it isn't fucking fair. She should be alive now, sobbing over Jeremy's body herself, crying because she knows she would have been stupid and never told him how he made her feel, that no matter how bad things got between them she really does care about him.

Then Bonnie and Alaric take him away, back to that witch house where Vicki is scared to go in because somehow she knows she'll be seen in there. So she paces and paces, because she doesn't know what's going on or if she even can go in there (but she should, she should go and see what they're doing to Jeremy while Mattie wallows in self-pity over his break-up and Elena coddles Damon and her mom lets some lousy trucker beat her).

It's electric on the inside of the house. Not warm or cold, but there's a spark in the air; she feels like it's crackling around her, like a match could ignore it at any given moment. But she goes down to the basement where witches are everywhere, flickering in and out, hovering and floating and glaring at Bonnie and Alaric and Jeremy's corpse.

Doesn't matter that Vicki is dead already. She's still scared as hell.

There's one witch in front of Bonnie, arguing with Bonnie while all the others circle around, whispering. It's hard to make out what anyone is saying, and Vicki tries to focus in when she feels something. Like a hand on her shoulder, guiding her over to Jeremy, and a voice whispers in her ear, "Hold on to him, and don't let go." So she does, she clutches Jeremy's hand tightly, and doesn't let go even when his eyes open and he's gasping for air and all the witch ghosts are suddenly gone as though they've all been snuffed out.

And for the first time, Vicki feels a real flicker of hope, because she can almost feel the warmth of Jeremy's hand.

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><p>Summer is rough. Flickering in and out of Jeremy's sight, barely ever able to get out more than his name. It doesn't help that she knows she isn't the only one he can see (that stupid Anna girl had to be able to break through, too). But she's seen, she's heard - it's more than she's had months. She's been slowly going insane over here on this side (it hits her when she giggles for two hours after the first time Jeremy sees her, and then cries for another four because Jeremy saw her).<p>

It's halfway through when the voice that told her to hold on comes back to her - and she can almost see the woman it belongs to, transparent and distant (like a ghost to a ghost). "I can help you, Vicki. Help you not be alone, cut off from those you love."

And instantly, Vicki's sold. She doesn't need to hear any more, the reaction is immediate because she's desperate and half insane and frantic. She's bursting into tears and begging the voice to help her and asking the woman how and thanking her over and over because the other side is so cold and so lonely. She thinks of touching Jeremy and being able to feel him (and him being able to feel her). She thinks of hugging Mattie and smacking him around for barely ever thinking of her. She thinks of going after Elena and Damon and Stefan and making their lives a living hell (like hers has been for so fucking long).

That's when the bombshell drops. The price.

"You have to get a stronger foothold in that world, Vicki. I can help you, but you must do something for me, something very important."

"I'll do it," she says, because she will - she'll drown puppies or burn kittens or anything, as long as she can end this miserable isolation.

"Elena Gilbert has to die."

And Vicki stops short. Blinks, because human sacrifice had crossed her mind among all the possible things she might have to do - but hearing it makes it real. More real than she'd remembered death and murder being after watching it from the other side for so long. Elena's name catches her off guard; she knows Elena. Known Elena her whole life and since then, and she wants Elena to suffer, to pay for helping to cover her up, for cozying up to Stefan and Damon after all the suffering and misery and fucked up shit those bastards keep causing.

Actually making sure Elena dies (maybe killing the girl with her own hands, feeling a living person at last only to take that life away) hits her harder than she's ready for.

"If you can't-"

"I'll do it."

Because Vicki doesn't have a choice. She can stay there, losing her sanity more and more while Jeremy takes his sweet time figuring out the deal and giving her more chances to see him and talk to him, or she can do what the witch wants and fight for a chance at life again. No matter if she's a ghost or a vampire or a human that'll die again one day.

It doesn't matter.

The other side is cold and lonely and cruel - and it sucks.

It isn't fair. Her being here while everyone tries to give Elena what she wants or needs when that bitch let Damon dump Vicki in the woods like trash and then steal away Jeremy's memories and love for her. When that bitch lied and lied and lied to Mattie and hugged him like she didn't know the truth. When that bitch had everyone flocking around her to protect her, to try to keep her from dying, and then bending over backwards to ensure it wouldn't be permanent. It isn't fair. So she'll do it. She'll make sure Elena dies, because she has to get out of here.

"I'll do it," she repeats with a firm nod and a determined smile. _Let's see how you like it over here, Elena._


End file.
